To the editor:
The COVID crime wave swept the nation not long after progressive prosecutors had been elected in a handful of communities nationwide. Despite politicized claims that the rise in crime was the result of criminal-justice reform in liberal-leaning jurisdictions, murders rose roughly equally in cities run by Republicans and cities run by Democrats.
Official reports published online found no connection between prosecutors and the crime wave, but good politicians won’t let bad situations go to waste when the facts can be twisted in their favor. Creating a sense of imminent danger leads humans to react on impulse and emotion, and logic and reason fall by the wayside. The damage is done before anyone realizes they’ve been suckered. The crime wave came and went with COVID, but it remains frightening that politicians are using fearmongering tactics that have empowered fascist regimes throughout history.
The irony is voting against progress is voting for mass incarceration and more prison construction, which both are an enormous expense and, by any measure, a proven failure.
You would not board an airplane or send your children to a school with a 70-percent failure rate, yet 70 percent of those incarcerated will return to prison – and you should be more afraid of what come out of prison than what goes in.
Placing non-violent individuals in community-based programs, away from dangerous criminals, has proven more effective at a fraction of the cost of incarceration while reducing prison overpopulation to allow meaningful rehabilitation programs to be implemented instead of simply dropping inmates back on the sidewalk of the judicial district where they were arrested after serving their time.
Our criminal-justice system has been the contributing cause, not the solution, to homelessness and inner-city ghettos and the generational consequences that ensue. Politicians claiming to fight for victims’ rights are the same politicians who have made future unborn generations pay for the greed of those too big to fail, too big to jail.
You need to look no further than Websites of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Virginia Department of Corrections for the facts.
Kevin Smith, Arlington
